Hey Travel Agent I Want My Money Back!

August 25th, 2010

Welcome to Mexico – enter at your own risk
I planned this trip ages ago. My friend came back from Mexico and told us about sipping margaritas on the white-sand beaches, the fabulous tourist sites where they were chased by immigration agents and the slums where it is positively dangerous. I decided to go, read some of the travel literature and booked my ticket plus accommodation at various hotels, laying out globs of money in the process. “You are going to love this,” promised the travel agent.

Escalating violence
But now I read daily about how the Mexican drug wars are escalating and I’m not so sure I want to be anywhere near there. “It will a break from your ordinary hum-drum life,” promised the agent when I called in and voiced doubts about my trip the other day. “We are marketing Mexico as ‘alternative tourism’,” she said. We can even offer you trips to remote mountain areas which are home to leftist Zapatista rebels and to the crime-ridden neighborhoods of Mexico City.

Tourism marketing
Foreign tourists, mostly from Europe, are signing up for undercover tours in Tepito, a sprawling market area in Mexico City notorious for drug deals, underage prostitution and pirated goods, said Cesar Estrada, head of Universal Travel. Another community centre runs what they call a ‘safari’ in this historic area, where many Mexicans refuse to set foot for fear of being robbed at gunpoint. “We tell visitors to dress simply. If they want pictures, our guides take them discreetly,” Estrada said. A German tourist said she prefers such tours because they provide the kind of insight into the real Mexico one could not get in a beach resort like Cancun.

The illegal immigrant tour
One can book a reality tour in the central state of Hidalgo, where one agency run by local residents simulates the dangerous trek Mexicans and Central Americans undertake when they cross the US border illegally. Tourists pay about $15 for a nocturnal trek through a state park where they struggle to keep up with guides posing as “polleros” – ruthless traffickers charging thousands of dollars to usher poor would-be migrants across the border. In order to help tourists understand migrants’ plight, guests are prohibited from carrying food and water as they wade through a river in the darkness and hide in bushes to elude the “migra,” or US immigration authorities.
Those who don’t run fast enough are thrown in the back of a mock border patrol truck.

The leftist rebel tour
Global Exchange Reality Tours, a US-based tour operator that seeks to educate tourists about social conditions in developing countries, brings travelers to meet with leftist rebels in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. There, tourists visit remote mountain areas that are home to members of the Zapatistas, the rebel group that spurred a largely bloodless peasant revolt in 1994. Travelers may not get a glimpse of the Zapatistas’ elusive leader, but they get acquainted with the food and culture of Mexico’s indigenous south.

I’ll stay with hum-drum. Anyone want to buy my trip?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2010 at 3:27 am and is filed under Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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